GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC – The Guyana government Wednesday announced that it would be making Spanish a compulsory subject at schools from September this year and turning to Cuba to deal with a shortage of nurses in the health care system.
In a wide-ranging news conference on Wednesday, President Dr. Irfaan Ali told reporters that his administration is also considering hiring Spanish teachers from overseas to ensure the project is a success.
Ali said he is in the process of getting a full assessment of the number of local teachers capable of teaching Spanish, noting that while there may be capacity at the secondary level, his desire, however, is for students from Grade Four or Five to begin taking classes in the subject.
He said to meet the demand. The government is in talks with “bilateral partners to loan human resources” in the transition period until Guyanese teachers can fill the need nationwide.
Ali said he would also move to have government ministers take Spanish language classes, hoping the private sector would follow suit.
The Head of State said that the government is considering developing an online platform so that any citizen who wishes to learn the language can do so, expressing their regret at having to drop Spanish as a subject in secondary school.
He said that learning a foreign language will help to make students more marketable when they enter the world of work.
President Ali also announced that the government was looking to Havana to help deal with a shortage of nurses here.
“We are in discussion now, for example, with Cuba,” he said, adding that he held talks earlier Wednesday with the Cuban Ambassador to Guyana “to see if we can get Cuban nurses to come into the system now in the immediate period to help to fill that gap because of the primary shortage that we have.
“The medium and long term is to train and retrain and train more than the capacity we need,” he said. He noted that the entire Caribbean has a significant shortage of nurses and other healthcare workers.
“Only yesterday, I met with several nurses at Georgetown Hospital, and they are so happy for the work that some of them are doubling up on shifts because of the shortage,” he said., noting that this hospital has a shortage of hundreds of nurses.
Nationally, the public health sector has a shortage of at least 1,300 nurses. Last December, the Guyana government increased the salaries of all categories of health workers, with nurse aides and nursing assistants now earning GUY$100,000 monthly; staff nurses GUY$169,438 and staff nurse/midwives GUY$195,000 (One GUY$=US$0.004 cents).
and then 